


Crushed crackers

by ginnyred



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 16:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17964152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnyred/pseuds/ginnyred
Summary: It's that kid. The one with the curly hair and the big smile, the one who always raises his hand in class because he knows the answers to every question. Sometimes he gets so excited by what he has to say that he forgets to raise his hand first and the teachers tell him off.“Giovanni, what did we say about speaking out of turn?”Marti doesn't like him at all.





	Crushed crackers

_Sometime in September, 2007_

It's the shoes' fault, really.

The laces always come undone, even now he's a big boy and he knows how to tie them properly on his own. His dad says he must be tying them wrong, or they wouldn't come undone so often, but Marti knows it's not true.

This never happens with the _other_ shoes. So there can't be anything wrong with how he ties them.

Right?

The laces come undone again on the stairs as he's making his way to class, but he doesn't notice. Not until it's too late.

The bell has just rung so there's a lot of chaos – children chatting, laughing, shouting, running even, though they know they shouldn't, not on the stairs. It's mainly older kids, but he does recognise a few faces from his class. They don't say hello and he doesn't either. He's thinking about how they probably don't like him very much, when it happens.

His laces get stuck under his sole and he trips. On instict, he breaks the fall with his hands and knees.

He doesn't hit the stone steps too hard, but hard enough that his palms hurt from the impact, and he can even see some blood. The worst part, though, is that his backpack slides off his shoulders as he falls – and someone steps on it.

Marti winces as he hears the sound of the crackers his mum packed for him that morning being crushed under an older kid's trainers.

The laughter follows soon afterwards. It almost explodes around him.

It's not unexpected, but it still makes him feel small, and silly, and weak.

The kids are so loud they almost drown out his teacher's shout. She is standing at the top of the stairs supervising the kids, but she runs down to him as soon as she sees him fall.

“ _Martino!_ Martino, are you hurt?”

He shakes his head, tears forming in his eyes already, but he sniffles and holds them back. He's not going to cry. Not for the scrapes, not for the backpack, or the crackers. Not even for the laughter – though that always hurts a bit more than he's ready for.

Marti doesn't take the hand his teacher offers him. Instead, he retrieves his backpack, ties his shoe – slowly, meticulously, with a double knot this time, even though he knows it won't last – and gets up on his own.

He only nods when she tells him she'll take him upstairs so they can put a band-aid on the scrapes he has on his palms, and does he want the new Spiderman ones? She hears they're really nice.

He shrugs and follows her up the stairs, a full step behind. He does his best to ignore all the snickering and the giggles and stares straight ahead. He can feel the tears threatening to spill again.

They're too quick for him this time.

*

“What's that?”

Marti doesn't reply.

The recess bell rang half a minute ago, but Marti is still at his desk, the one in the last row right next to the window. He's pulled out his crackers from his backpack and he's staring helplessly down at them. They're... sand now. Like the sand at the beach in Cecina, just opposite where his auntie lives.

A packet of sand crackers, completely ruined.

“Hey! I said what's that.” The voice is insistent and mildly offended by his silence.

Marti looks up.

It's that kid. The one with the curly hair and the big smile, the one who always raises his hand in class because he knows the answers to every question. Sometimes he gets so excited by what he has to say that he forgets to raise his hand first and the teachers tell him off.

_“Giovanni, what did we say about speaking out of turn?”_

Marti doesn't like him at all.

“My crackers,” he replies after a long pause, and it sounds like a challenge.

_I'm not scared of you._

He holds the kid's gaze – _defiant_ would be the word for it, but big words are meaningless when you're six. The other boy doesn't seem to care. He looks down critically at the packet of crackers lying pathetically on Marti's desk.

“What happened to them?”

Marti narrows his eyes.

Is the boy making fun of him? True, Marti didn't see him on the stairs earlier laughing along with the other kids, but that means nothing. He _could_ have been there.

Why does he care anyway?

“They got crushed in my backpack,” he explains succintly, with a dismissive hand gesture. One his dad does often enough, when he's not in the mood for his questions.

It's a mistake, waving his arms about like that – Marti realises that later. It only draws attention to the band-aids.

“And what happened to your hands?” the boy asks, as Marti closes them into fists a couple of seconds too late.

“I fell.”

“Oh.”

The boy tilts his head to one side, then to the other, his gaze moving curiously between Marti's hands and his crackers. The boy's hoodie is way too big for him, Marti notices, and the head movements make it look like he's about to disappear inside of it.

“They look like sand,” he announces finally. “Your crackers. They look like sand.”

Marti shrugs.

That's what he thought too, but he's not going to give this kid the satisfaction of agreeing with him.

“You can't eat sand,” the boy continues in a knowing tone. “I tried once and my mum had to take me to the doctor's. She was really scared.” 

He sounds really proud of himself.

“They're not really sand,” Marti points out testily. For some reason, it seems like an important thing to say right now. “They're still crackers.”

“Yeah, but they _look_ like sand.” The boy puts his right hand into his giant hoodie's front pocket and fishes out his own packet of crackers. Of course his are perfectly intact – Marti expected nothing less. The bright smile the boy offers Marti unsettles him a little, though. “Do you want some of mine? They're too many for me anyway.”

“No, thanks.”

The words are out before he has time to think, and Marti feels bad as soon as he says them. He's not sure he understands why: he doesn't really want this boy's crackers – his can still be eaten.

They're just... a bit sand-like, that's all. Not that he'd ever admit it out loud.

“Oh, okay.”

The kid seems genuinely surprised by his refusal. Almost as if he wasn't expecting Marti to say no, and now he's not sure what to do with the answer he got.

Marti expects him to leave: what else could he do? Marti left him no choice.

But the boy doesn't – not right away. Instead, he makes a show of opening his packet using his teeth and pulls out a single cracker. To Marti's surprise, he lays it down carefully on Marti's desk next to his pencil case.

“Well, if you change your mind,” he says, slightly too cheerfully, and turns to leave.

Marti just stares, stunned. He can't seem to figure out what's just happened, or what it's supposed to mean, so he stares.

He stares at his own crushed crackers and at the pristine one the boy left on his desk.

He stares at the boy too, at his messy hair, at his stupid blue hoodie that's too big for him, at the way he's half-walking half-skipping across the classroom to the door. He's almost made it, in a moment he'll be out in the corridor where the other children from their class are playing.

It's a split-second decision. One of the best of his whole life.

“Giovanni? Wait!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. This one required a lot of faith, I know.


End file.
